It took the jury four hours to agree that Paul Gooden had killed his wife, Ingrid Andrade-Gooden, and dumped her body in mangroves along the Palisadoes Road in Kingston just over a year ago.

But immediately after the verdict was announced in the Home Circuit Court yesterday afternoon, Gooden’s mother, Pat Gooden, said she intended to instruct her son’s lawyers to file an appeal.

“He is not guilty of anything, he is ever innocent… he is not a violent man,” Mrs Gooden said of her 39 year-old son who prosecutors painted as a possessive and obsessive man whose jealousy drove him to murder.

Gooden, a sales supervisor at Yummy Bakery in Kingston, was charged with non-capital murder and could get the maximum sentence of life in prison. He will know his fate tomorrow when the judge hearing the case, Justice Marva McIntosh, hands down the sentence.

Gooden, as he had done throughout the four-week trial, except for his time giving evidence, showed no emotion after the foreman of the 12-member jury read the unanimous verdict. However, the crowd of mostly lawyers and law students inside the number two court greeted the verdict with muted approval.

Ingrid Andrade-Gooden’s father, Glen Andrade, a former director of public prosecutions, and his wife, Ruby, who sat in the front row, smiled. Pat Gooden, who sat immediately behind the Andrades throughout the trial, closed her eyes in defeat.

“Thank God, justice has been served,” Glen Andrade told the Observer afterwards. “The conviction is absolutely justifiable.”

The trial, which opened on October 26, was marked by emotional and riveting testimony of a love that had gone sour, accusations of infidelity, and admissions by the accused that he had lied to the police.

The Crown, led by Director of Public Prosecutions Kent Pantry, charged that between November 6 and 8, 2003, Gooden killed his 36 year-old wife, a former National Housing Development Corporation manager, by smothering and strangling her and dumping her body in mangroves along the Palisadoes Road.

Pantry told the jury that Andrade-Gooden was last seen alive up to 9:00 pm on November 6. Her sister Sharon, he said, telephoned from Miami, and Paul Gooden answered the phone and told her they were about to have spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

However, after dinner she was never seen alive again. Her body was found on November 10 with its face mutilated, eyes missing, had animal bites as well as human teeth marks.

“It is jealousy, obsession and rejection that caused him to kill her,” Pantry said. But Gooden, when he took the witness stand, portrayed himself as a loving, caring husband tolerant of his wife’s moods.

He said that the night before his wife disappeared he saw her with scratch marks in the region of her right shoulder and breast area. She told him that she had received the scratches in the bushes during a trip to Port Royal with a friend named Damion.

When Pantry asked Gooden why he had not reported this information to the police during his interrogation, he said: “I did not tell the police as I don’t trust the police. My wife asked me not to tell anyone and I love her, so I did not.”

Gooden’s lawyer also tendered e-mail evidence suggesting that Ingrid may have had an affair with a foreign man who signed his electronic messages as Victor Hugo and may have visited her in Jamaica in the month before her death.

In an e-mail message to Victor Hugo on October 22 Ingrid wrote: “Think of me. Talk to me, baby. I don’t have any regrets about you making love to me. Hope we will make love again.”

In his reply Hugo wrote: “I hope we make love again. I tell you what, that flight to Orlando was real quick.”

On the opening day, the victim’s father broke down in tears during his testimony as he recalled the last day he saw her alive.

The crowd inside the courtroom was heaviest on that day and on the days when Gooden testified.

During the time the jury deliberated (11:10 am to 3:10 pm) yesterday, the large crowd awaiting the verdict grew impatient.

Some persons who had followed the case over the four weeks argued that it was a clear cut case of murder and that it should have taken the jury only 30 minutes to arrive at a verdict.

When they eventually heard that the jury had returned, they rushed to the courtroom door.